SEC v. Daniel F. Putnam, et al. (2020)

Judgment entered

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On September 10, 2024 the District of Utah entered judgment for the SEC against Daniel Putnam, Jean Paul Ramirez Rico and the two companies, ordering about $7.8 million in disgorgement, $1.3 million in interest and $7.2 million in penalties. The outcome for Angel Rodriguez was not checked.

The record

Structured fields for this action, as recorded in our case library.
Agency	SEC
Release number	LR-24829
Date filed	2020-06-05
Date resolved	2024-09-10
Status	judgment
Asset class	crypto
Criminal parallel	No
Defendants	Daniel F. Putnam (individual) ; Jean Paul Ramirez Rico (individual) ; Angel A. Rodriguez (individual) ; MMT Distribution, LLC (entity) ; R & D Global, LLC (entity)
Cited as charged or alleged	Exchange Act s.10(b) and Rule 10b-5 ; Securities Act s.17(a) ; Securities Act s.5 (statutes and rules cited in the document; not a finding that they were violated)
Techniques

What was ordered

Civil penalty: $7.2m
Disgorgement: $7.8m
Prejudgment interest: $1.3m
Total relief: $16.3m
Alleged gain: —

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars.

What is alleged to have happened

The SEC announced the unsealed complaint on June 5, 2020 (LR-24829), filed in the District of Utah on May 7. It alleges Putnam spent mining proceeds on a condominium and other items, and that the trading-package money went to personal use and some distributions to earlier investors that the release calls Ponzi-like. The defendants used MMT Distribution and R & D Global.

The Ponzi tag is removed because the release describes crypto mining and trading offering frauds with Ponzi-like distributions as one use. The record ran the five names together; they are now listed separately and the status is now judgment.

Outcome. The court's civil judgment of September 10, 2024 orders disgorgement of $1,963,432 (Putnam, MMT and R&D jointly), $4,622,011 (Ramirez Rico) and $1,248,258 (Putnam and Ramirez Rico jointly), with prejudgment interest of $336,593, $792,357 and $213,990, and penalties of $1,960,000 (Putnam), $4,620,000 (Ramirez Rico) and $288,078 each for MMT and R&D. The stored figures add those lines. The one-page judgment does not describe how it was reached, and it names no judgment against Angel Rodriguez, whose outcome was not checked.

Timeline

2020-06-05 Litigation release published
2024-09-10 Civil judgment entered against Putnam, Ramirez Rico, MMT Distribution and R&D Global

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

The linked release is a work of the United States government and is not subject to copyright. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.